As expected, Samsung today announced the Samsung Galaxy Note II Android smartphone at IFA in Berlin. The Note II looks like a larger Samsung Galaxy S III, with a slimmer shape compared to the first Galaxy Note. That makes it more hand friendly, despite the big 5.5" HD Super AMOLED display. Miraculously, it's also a hair thinner at 9.4mm while sporting a higher capacity 3,100 mAh battery.

The Galaxy Note II has many of the cool S Pen apps and features we covered in our Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet review. These include a floating notes app, a smart pen that triggers a launcher of pen capable apps when the pen is removed from the silo and more. Sweet!

The Note II runs on a 1.6GHz quad core Exynos CPU with Mali 400 graphics. That's the fastest Exynos yet, clocked a bit higher than the 1.4GHz international Samsung Galaxy S III. The phone has 2 gigs of RAM, and is available with a variety of internal storage allotments from 16 to 64 gigs. And yes, there's a microSD card slot.

The Note II will ship with Android OS 4.1 Jelly Bean (yes!) and it has a front 1.9MP camera, rear 8MP camera, NFC, GPS with Glonass and a 1280 x 720 display (down slightly from the 1280 x 800 resolution on the original Galaxy Note).

So when can you get one? Samsung says it will start shipping in Europe, Asia and the Middle East in October and should hit US shores by the end of 2012. Patience, Grasshopper. Patience.